Joseph DeMartino
Moderator
It isn't "almost a theme" it is a theme central to the show. The relentless repetition of the questions (and the refusal to accept the conventional answers, see "Comes the Inquisitor") are part of the "Synanon Game", developed as part of the therpeutic system at Synanon, a California drug rehabilitation program of the 60s and 70s. The idea was to strip the individual down to his core by pounding him with "who are you?" and "what do you want?" in group therapy sessions where none of his answers were good enough. The idea was the you couldn't really know what you wanted until you knew who you were, and you couldn't define who you were in terms of externals such as your name, the place where you lived or the sports team you rooted for. You had to find something basic to you that simply was you, your actual identity, and only then proceed to what the newly discovered you really wanted. I'm grossly oversimplifying here, but it was this basic idea from the Synanon game that interested JMS, and which he later incorporated into B5. (JMS has degrees in both psychology and sociology, and at one time worked as some kind of counsellor, though I can't remember if his work involved drug or alcohol abuse. So he would certainly have known about Synanon from professional publications, and from the popular press when the organization later came under fire for cult-like practices and he may well have worked with either former Synanon patients or counsellors. I haven't seen anything to suggest that JMS was directly involved in Synanon itself.)
Part of the problem with the Vorlons and Shadows is that each only asks one of the questions.
The Vorlons are obessesed with identity and don't care about what anyone wants or wants to do, because everyone will get what the Vorlons give them and do what the Vorlons tell them to do. That is the natural order of things.
The Shadows ask only "what do you want?" without regard to who they're asking because they think that absolutely selfishness, confilct and war will ultimately produce good things out of the wreckage. The problem is that if you offer "whatever they want" to evil people, or even morally confused ones, horror will result. Hence the tragedy of Londo, who wanted "good" things, but wasn't picky enough about either the means or the likely side-effects his actions would produce.
The younger races (like the recovering junkie) have to figure out who they are for themselves, without having an identiy imposed on them from the outside, and they work out what they want.
No, it is in the season 2 section, and the voice isn't Sheridan's.
That is a scene from an episode, a kind of dream, and the voice is that of a charcter we haven't yet met. Regards,
Joe
